Edited by T. Trent Gegax & Woody Leonhard | August 13, 2013 06:00 PDT | 09:00 EDT | 13:00 UTC
**Sponsored by Citrix**
>> START/STOP: Microsoft shipped only 200,000 Surface Pros last quarter, by Matt Rosoff: "Last week, IDC released its tablet shipment statistics for the second quarter of 2013... Microsoft shipped only 300,000 Surface tablets [both Surface Pro and Surface RT] during the quarter. That's one-third the number it shipped in the first quarter... Windows RT shipped on about 200,000 tablets sold during the quarter. If you assume that at least half of those were Surface RTs (since few other OEMs are selling RT devices), that means Microsoft sold less than 200,000 Surface Pros during the second quarter... Windows RT shipped on about 200,000 tablets sold during the quarter. If you assume that at least half of those were Surface RTs (since few other OEMs are selling RT devices), that means Microsoft sold less than 200,000 Surface Pros during the second quarter." CITEWorld
>>>> Can Suface be saved? Paul Thurrot's WinSupersite
>>>> Buyers reject touchscreen notebooks, spooked by higher prices and concerns about value of Windows 8's touch UI. ComputerWorld
>> ROTTING APPLE: Larry Ellison sees dismal future for Apple without Steve Jobs, by Mikey Campbell: "In an interview with Charlie Rose set to air on Tuesday, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison gave a bleak outlook when asked how Apple will fare without his close friend Steve Jobs at the reins.... Rose asked the tech mogul to share his thoughts on what Apple will become without Jobs. Ellison said 'we already know. We saw -- we conducted the experiment,' Ellison explained. 'I mean, it's been done. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. We saw Apple without Steve Jobs. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. Now, we're gonna see Apple without Steve Jobs.' Each time Ellison described Apple with Jobs, he gestured up with his hand; without Jobs, a trough.... When Rose asked what enabled Jobs, besides his love of and dedication to Apple, to make the company successful, Ellison said, 'He was, he was brilliant. I mean, he was our Edison. He was our Picasso. He was an incredible inventor.'" AppleInsider
** Gartner Critical Capabilities for Mobile Device Management: Gartner provides ratings for mobile device management (MDM) critical capabilities and provides recommendations to guide vendor and product selection. Find out why Citrix achieved the highest overall rating possible, Outstanding, for MDM critical capabilities. View the complete report.http://deliver.citrix.com/WWWB0713CXMIWMTNWSLTRGCC.html
>> MONEY SHOT: Facebook's Sandberg sells $91 million in shares after surge, by Lisa Rapaport & Brian Womack: "Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg sold about $91 million worth of shares in the social network after the stock topped its $38 initial public offering price for the first time since May 2012.... Sandberg sold 2.37 million Facebook shares on Aug. 7, two days after Facebook closed at a record high of $39.19, according to a regulatory filing. With the latest sale she has sold more than 7 million shares, or about 12 percent of her total, since the IPO. The holdings include unvested restricted stock units as of end-2012 and options." Bloomberg
>> DEADPOOL: BlackBerry's bleak options: Will suitors really pay for a wedding?, by John Cox: "As BlackBerry's board of directors formally begin exploring 'strategicalternatives,' they'll find their options limited, according to two IT sectoranalysts. All the likely alternatives call for a much diminished company, or broken up into some software assets and a brand value that's declining every day." InfoWorld
>>>> Should Microsoft step in to buy Blackberry, or Samsung or Amazon? CNBC Video
>>>> Why would anyone buy Blackberry now? AllThingsD
>> IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T HEARD: Apple said to prepare holiday refresh of iPhones to iPads, by Adam Satariano & Tim Culpan: "Apple will unveil a new iPhone at a Sept. 10 event... New iPad models, including an iPad with a thinner body design and an iPad mini with a high-resolution screen will be unveiled later " Bloomberg
>> #EPICFAIL: Outsourced software project with 6,000 pages of specs ends badly, by Patrick Thibodeau: "A modernization of Orange County, Calif.'s tax collection system that was supposed to take three years and cost less than $8 million will cost twice that amount and take twice as long. Instead of pursuing completion, Orange County decided to give up. It abandoned the project, declared the software 'fatally flawed,' and then filed a lawsuit in April against the contractor. The two sides, the county and the contractor, Tata Consultancy Services and its U.S.-based subsidiary, are now attempting reach a mediated agreement," Who woulda thought? InfoWorld
>> REDACTED: First 100 pages of Aaron Swartz's Secret Service file released, by Kevin Poulsen: "After half-a-year of delays and roadblocks, the U.S Secret Service today released the first 104 pages of agency documents about the late coder and activist Aaron Swartz, including a brief report on Swartz's suicide less than three months before his scheduled trial... The heavily redacted documents released today confirm earlier reports that the Secret Service was interested in a 'Guerilla Open Access Manifesto' that Swartz and others had penned in 2008." Wired
>> CASH SQUEEZE: Every important person in Bitcoin just got subpoenaed by New York's financial regulator, by Kashmir Hill: "Things are getting serious for Bitcoin this month: a federal judge declared it real money, Bloomberg gave it an experimental ticker (XBT), and New York's financial regulator announced an interest in regulating it. Declaring Bitcoin 'a virtual Wild West for narcotraffickers and other criminals,' the New York State Department of Financial Services is stepping into the sheriff's boots...The department is starting out by subpoenaing 22 digital-currency companies and investors to get a lay of the Bitcoin land." Forbes
>> TIE-UP: Facebook buys speech translation software company, by Zach Miners: "Facebook is acquiring a company that specializes in speech interpretation and translation software... Mobile Technologies' flagship product is Jibbigo, a speech-to-speech translation mobile app. Facebook plans to continue supporting the app for the time being, a company spokesman said. Mobile Technologies has also developed the first automatic, simultaneous interpretation service for lectures and has deployed it in educational settings" InfoWorld
>> MICROSOFT MISCHIEF: Waiting for a Windows Phone update? Let's talk again next year, by Andrew Orlowski: "Windows Phone owners must wait until next spring for a major platform update, latest reports appear to confirm... there are unlikely to be any surprises prior to Windows Phone 8.1 -- codenamed by Windows as the 'Blue' Phone update -- which has been pegged for release in spring 2014... 2011's Mango update - aka WinPhone 7.5 - provided the last significant major userland change, and arguably the only major noticeable overhaul since Windows Phone's launch in late 2010." Trollbait? The Register
>>>> MS Phone honcho Joe Belfiore accidentally leaks a future version of Windows Phone. Is it GDR3 or Blue? WP Central
>>>> CEO of UK's largest network says Microsoft must do more for Windows Phone 8 Mobile Today
>> A BIT LATE: Windows 8.1: When will users get the final bits?, by Mary Jo Foley:"Microsoft is on track to finalize Windows 8.1 the last week of August... I'm hearing scuttlebutt that Microsoft is not planning to make available the final Windows 8.1 bits to its MSDN or TechNet subscribers shortly after the release RTMs... The new word, one of my best tipsters tells me, Microsoft is going to hold off on making available the final Windows 8.1 bits until mid-October 2013 or so. That will be both the general availability date, as well as the 'launch' date when new hardware running those bits will be available." ZDNet
>>>> XP's retirement will be hacker heaven InfoWorld
>> EXPLAINER: The Hyperloop, in basic terms, by Jason O. Gilbert: "PayPal co-founder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled his plans for the Hyperloop, a transportation system that he claims will be able to get people from Los Angeles to San Francisco in under 30 minutes.... There is a lot of complicated physics, fluid dynamics and computational transportation science involved in the particulars of the Hyperloop, which spanned 57 PDF pages in Musk's first pass at an explanation. When you break it down, however, it's really a system that anyone can understand." Medium
>> FLIPPED: Android is better: How I fell in love with Android and how you can too, by Paul Stamatiou: It was just meant to be a quick experiment. I started using a Nexus 4. I was going to go right back to my iPhone after a week. I was designing more and more Android interfaces at Twitter and realized I needed to more intimately grok Android UI paradigms.... A week in it started feeling normal; the larger form factor was no longer a nuisance. A month in I didn't miss anything about my iPhone. Two months in I sold my iPhone 5 and iPad Mini. It has now been three months since I made the switch. I'm loving Android. I only missed having a good camera so I just upgraded to a Google Edition Samsung Galaxy S4." Stammy's Blog
>> DON'T BE EVIL: Google Fiber continues awful ISP tradition of banning 'servers', by Dan Auerbach: "In a Wired piece published recently, Ryan Singel assails Google's newfound hypocrisy when it comes to net neutrality. And he's right. Having spent many years fighting to stop Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from discriminating between different types of Internet traffic, the tech giant is now perpetuating a long-standing form of that discrimation with Google Fiber, its own ISP, by adopting a terrible Terms of Service clause that bans the use of 'servers.' " Electronic Frontier Foundation
>> #FAIL: Microsoft's Office 365 Add-ons muddy licensing and make customers pay twice, by Gregg Keizer: "Microsoft has kicked off licensing add-ons that let enterprises add Office 365 subscriptions atop existing volume license agreements, touting the new options as a more flexible, simpler way for businesses to move to a rent-not-buy model. Flexible: Maybe. Simpler? Hardly. Independent analysts scoffed at any notion of Microsoft's licensing becoming easier to understand, with one saying that the Redmond, Wash. company's practices have become so Byzantine it's 'getting ridiculous.'" InfoWorld
>> DATA VIZ: The entire history of the world -- really, all of it -- distilled into a single gorgeous chart, by Rebecca Onion: "This 'Histomap,' created by John B. Sparks, was first printed by Rand McNally in 1931. This giant, ambitious chart fit neatly with a trend in nonfiction book publishing of the 1920s and 1930s: the "outline," in which large subjects (the history of the world! every school of philosophy! all of modern physics!) were distilled into a form comprehensible to the most uneducated layman." Slate
>> KIT: Intel's 12-Core Xeon with 30MB of L3: The new Mac Pro's CPU?, by Chris Angelini: Tom's Hardware via Hacker News
>> AVAILABLE: Perl 5.18.1: perl.org
>> NSFW: Everything that is hilariously wrong with YouTube in one video: JelloApocalypse via Gizmodo
>> TWEET O THE DAY: "I turned on Ashton Kutcher interview with Charlie Rose and tried to keep an open mind. I lasted 2 minutes." @ericjackson
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